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Oklahoma City's Milk Bottle building is being restored to its original appearance

A quirky Oklahoma City landmark since 1930, the milk bottle grocery building at NW 23 and N Classen is being restored to its original appearance.

The Braums Milk bottle building at 2426 N Classen is being restored to its original appearance. The tiny, triangular building was constructed in 1930 to serve streetcar riders. The iconic milk bottle was added in 1948. Photo By Steve Gooch, The Oklahoman Archives
Steve Gooch -
The Oklahoman

“The windows have been boarded up for a long time and they are going to completely redo the inside and get it ready for another tenant,” said Catherine Montgomery, preservation architect at Preservation & Design Studio, who has assisted with the renovations.

After removing a sheet of plywood covering one of the building’s windows, owner Elise Kilpatrick discovered it had covered an original transom window dating to the 1930s with one pane of glass still intact.

“I said ‘we need to uncover this,’” Kilpatrick said. “We are trying to take the building back as close as we can to when it was first built.”

New windows, light fixtures, awnings and a new mahogany door are being installed in the little grocery store building as part of the project.

The nearly 400-square-foot triangular building has been vacant since the Saigon Baguette sandwich shop closed its doors after occupying the space since the late 1980s.

The restorations are being done with the help of historic preservation tax credits.

The milk bottle grocery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The structure was built to sit on the old Belle Isle streetcar stop that ran diagonally across Classen Boulevard, which was part of U.S. Route 66’s original Oklahoma City alignment.

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Brianna Bailey has lived in Idaho, Germany and Southern California, but Oklahoma is her adopted home. She has a bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma and has worked at several newspapers in Oklahoma and Southern...